[asterisk-users] RAMDisk vs Extarnal server for recording

[David Backeberg]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 7:36 AM, Robin <robin at zoap.org> wrote:
> Thanks for your response.
> The hardware I have now is not sufficient to set up a ramdisk (just 4 gb)...
> But memory is rather cheap nowadays. If i'd buf up the server with 8 extra
> gigs for use as a ramdrive, do you think that might be enough to record
> between 30-60 simultanious streams? Or should it be way more?

I'm doing ramdisk recordings of about the same number of streams
you're talking, in 4GB.
I move out completed recordings once every 15 minutes or so via NFS,
and as such, I never use very much of the ramdisk. There's no rule
that says you have to use the whole 4GB of ram for recordings. I'm
probably staying below 100MB or so. Strictly speaking, I'm using both
ramdisk and external server, but the external server is just a
centralized system with larger disks.

However, I know that this arrangement isn't working for my load which
is about to double again, so I'm upgrading to better hardware (and
maintaining the status quo with my asterisk arrangement)

If you read every single title of asterisk-users in the last few
months, you'll find a similar discussion on this topic which went
through the pros and cons of ramdisk versus centralized server.

Somebody at that time mentioned particular names of programs that can
do the centralized recordings by doing network hardware level
replication and picking off the SIP packets. I've never done this, but
if you find that mailing list thread you'll be able to find names of
people who say they've done that.